Posts Tagged ‘seattle’

For this week’s food news roundup, I thought I’d serve up a few
ideas for food-inspired day trips this weekend.

Lavender on the Tongue

As part of this year’s Sequim Lavender festivals, a new one
called Lavender Farm Faire has been added, an it includes a
culinary
program with food, crafts and cooking demonstrations at
Carrie Blake Park (click for a Google map). The festival
started Friday, but goes through Sunday.

Five cooking demonstrations will happen Sunday, though Sunshine
Lavender and Herb Farm will host several a day today and Saturday.
Among what’s cooking will be a four-course meal made by Cedarbook
Lavender and Herb Farm with a spring green and asparagus salad with
cranberry lavender vinaigrette, roasted red potatoes with Herbs de
Provence (with lavender, of course), grilled flank steak with
lavender pepper marinade and sautéed pears with lavender honey.

Farms also will offer lavender-laced (and non-lavender) foods
throughout the fair. The wine and beer garden also will offer a
taste of Olympic Cellars’ lavender infused wine Mélange Nouveau.
Purple Haze restaurant will have a variety of food and lavender
cocktails (margaritas and cosmopolitans).

Bite of Seattle

Across the water on the other side of Kitsap this weekend is the
annual Bite of
Seattle at the Seattle Center.

For those who’ve in the past grown tired of going and getting
filled up on only one giant plate of taste (or bursting at the
seems when you try to top off two plates with a
Shishkaberry), this year’s festival requires participating
restaurants to have actual bite-sized portions for $3.75, the
Seattle Weekly reports.

Over at the Fisher Building, local celebrity chefs will offer
near-hourly demonstrations for
The Bite Cooks portion of the festival. And in the Alki
courtyard, for $10, you can get into
The Alley, hosted by Tom Douglas for tastes from both
established and new Seattle restaurants. Most proceeds from the
Alley benefit Food Lifeline, so you can feed your soul a little as
well.

Strawberry Festival

Vashon Island is home to a festival more than a century old
(though it apparently has had several names over the years). The
Strawberry
Festival has a variety of vendors, like those you’d see at a
variety of small-town festivals, including booths with strawberry
shortcakes, smoothies, and chocolate-dipped strawberries. The
weekend festival also includes what I’ve decided should be a
requisite at any festival, an early morning pancake breakfast (with
strawberries!). A shuttle leaves every 30 minutes from the ferry
terminal. It’s $1 each way.

Pike Place Chef Demos

On Sunday, Pike Place Market hosts another of its
Sunday chef demonstrations with Burce Naftalay of Le Gourmand
at noon and Seth Caswell of emmer & rye at 2 p.m. Next Sunday
is the second annual “Master of the Market” cooking
competition.

Note on next weekend

The brewer
lineup for Bremerton’s Summer Brewfest on July 23 was announced
this week. The event will include 24 breweries, including Kitsap’s
half dozen commercial breweries.

The same day (or maybe before) also is supposed to mark the
opening of Bremerton’s Toro
Lounge on Pacific Avenue.

And lastly, as I just mentioned earlier this afternoon, Sunday
will be the inaugural
Sunday farmers market in Bremerton.

Just a note

I apparently missed this when it went online in late May, but
Bremerton’s Blackberry fest apparently got
a nod from New York Magazine, which compiled a list of 50 food
destinations in 50 states. They recommended the blackberry slugs
and had this to say in general, “devotees can head to a three-day
orgy of blackberry consumption: the Bremerton Blackberry Festival,
held along the boardwalk in downtown Bremerton — a smallish Navy
town southwest of Bainbridge Island on Puget Sound.” I pity the
poor New Yorkers who’ll take the ferry from Seattle to Bainbridge
and drive 50 minutes to Bremerton. Hopefully someone at the
terminal will point them the right way.

Kitsap News

The restaurant action, it seems, is on Bainbridge Island.
Recently chef and food writer Greg Atkinson announced that he would
open a restaurant on the island. Kitsap Sun’s reporter Rachel
Pritchett
talked with him about it for a story on Monday. By Wednesday,
news had surfaced that Hitchcock, whose locally focused fine dining
fare has been lauded by area food critics, may expand into the
space next door,
according to Bainbridge Conversation’s Tristan Baurick.

At Poulsbo’s farmers market on Saturday, Chef Tomas Nevarez,
owner of the in-home chef instruction company Simmer Down will
demonstrate creating a meal with locally harvested foods.

At Bainbridge Farmers Market, fstopcafé will offer a coffee
roasting demonstration and tea tastings and a talk on tea.

Other Northwest News

Seattle Beerfest
started Friday. The annual, often crowded, convention for beer
geeks at Seattle Center promises 130 brews on tap. It opens at noon
Saturday and Sunday. Cost is $25

I missed this last week, but apparently of note is that
Seattle’s food scene is better than Portland’s,
according to Sunset Magazine, which pitted top cities against
each other. Hmmm, I envision a Portlandia episode in the
making.

And now, I’m cutting this short so I can get to …

Fourth of July

Northwest weather guru
Cliff Mass predicts that the holiday will get off to a cloudy
start, but will sun up by the afternoon with temperatures in the
mid-70s. That means, of course, prime grilling
weather. Every food magazine out there has grilling guides
and suggestions.

Personally, I’m not a fan of making all the food red, white and
blue (that’s what decorations are for), but there are some more
subtle colored-food touches such as red, white and blue potatoes as
suggested by Bainbridge Farmers Market, or maybe a little
blueberry, raspberry cobbler.

Coincidentally, as the Sea Life blog’s Jeff Adams
reminded readers, this weekend also is open to crabbing season
and “crabs are as Northwest’erican as espresso and apple pie,” he
said. You can grill crab, though some suggest that (after cleaning
it, of course) that you lightly wrap it in foil. Crab can be easy
to overcook, so be gentle.

From the Food Life recipe archives (which I realize is a bit
anemic), I can suggest
Peruvian kebabs with roasted yellow pepper sauce, perhaps
accompanied by
grilled corn on the cob and for dessert,
grilled nectarines with berry sauce, though blueberries may
make a more seasonally friendly accompaniment than
blackberries.

Also of note from the fine food publications out there, Saveur
magazine this year offered a
grilling guide that included a half dozen barbecue sauce
recipes from Dr. Pepper sauce to Carolina gold, briskets and hush
puppy or pickled sides (holy wow, why aren’t I eating right now?!).
Southern Living boasts the
“ultimate” grilling guide. And for those who want fewer
calories, Cooking Light also has a Fourth
of July recipe compilation.

As always, fell free to share any other suggestions you have for
celebratory eating on the Fourth! Hope you all eat (and/or drink)
well and stay safe!

To Market, To Market

Elsewhere in the local food world, Bainbridge farmers market
heralded the arrival of the season’s first, fresh island
strawberries! The market starts at 9 a.m. Saturday, and in years
past, those berries cleared out fast.

At the Poulsbo market Saturday, “Bug Chef” (yep, it’s what you
think it is) David George
Gordon will be signing his new book “The Secret World of Slugs
and Snails: Life in the Very Slow Lane” at 10 a.m. and 11:30
a.m.

Brews

For those looking to venture outside Kitsap for Excitement this
weekend (or looking for somewhere to take dad), Kenmore is hosting
the Washington Brewers
Festival, which features 60 brewers purring 200 beers Saturday
and Sunday.

THE SUN IS OUT! With such a murky May, that’s something to
shout about. And to celebrate. I’ve already got iced barley tea in
the making in anticipation of warmer weather yet.

Both Poulsbo and Port Townsend farmers markets are canceled on
Saturday, but in their stead will be the festivals that pack West
Sound communities during Memorial Day Weekend. You may not be able
to get the same fresh veggies, but there will be parades and
pancake breakfasts. And if you’re a really
industrious Kitsapper (and festival nut), you may be able to
squeeze in a foot ferry ride to Port Orchard after Bremerton’s
Armed Forces
Day Parade (10 a.m.) before you head over to Viking Fest’s (2 p.m.). How
you can also fit in Port Townsend Rhody Fest’s
(1 p.m.) is beyond me.

Seattle
Green Fest runs Saturday and Sunday at Qwest Field Event
Center. While it’s focused mostly on green businesses and the like,
booths will have organic vegetarian dishes, organic beer and wine
and a chocolate and sustainable coffee pairing talk at noon on
Sunday.

Local Food for Baby

The Small Potatoes blog has posts again after taking a little
(like bouncing baby little) hiatus. She returns with
this post on feeding the new little locavore with tips on
equipment and food.

$5 Market Lunch

Over at the Kitsap Cuisine
blog, Brandy had a chance to check out the new market lunch
offered on Saturdays at Bay Street Bistro in Port Orchard. Here’s
part of what she says of it in her
post: “The idea is, you can come in on your own and have a
low-cost plate of something wonderful, or better yet, come in with
friends and order several plates to share in the Mediterranean
style. … I thought this was a great way to get a feel for chef’s
style.” Looks like I have something to try out on Saturday.

End of the World

At 6 p.m. Saturday, the world as we know it is
slated to end, according to Harold Camping, head of the
Christian network Family Radio. What does this have to do with
food? Well, one clever LA Times blogger has decided (and
blogged) that such an event calls for musing on last meals.
Hers includes margaritas, tempura-battered fried chicken and red
velvet cake. My last day of meals would likely include duck breast
in cherry sauce from La Fermata, popcorn with lots of Ajinomoto
(essentially pure MSG because who cares at that point?) my
grandma’s yakisoba, iced and sweetened matcha and one last, full
pint of chocolate peanut butter ice cream. How about yours?

Fish Hype

The year’s first shipment of Copper River salmon made its way to
Seattle Tuesday to much (though brief) ado
from the local TV stations. don’t get me wrong, the fish is good.
But I think some of the breathless hype and a fair amount of the
cost has just a little to do with marketing. King fillets are,
however,
a little cheaper at about $30 to $50 a pound at Pike Place
market this year because of a better run.

Chocolate Scientist

Theo chocolate factory in Fremont apparently has a chocolate
scientist,
according to The Stranger’s Charles Mudede. Andy McShea
apparently has been working to make pure chocolate into more than
candy bars. He’s been making beverages and pudding with nothing
else added. He tells The Stranger, “By looking at the material, and
understanding its properties, we can do fun things with it.”

That’s all for this week. I’d have read more food news, but
frankly, I’m too busy closing my eyes and setting my face toward
the sun! Have a great weekend!

I thought the bacon hype would die down, but I was very wrong.
In the past couple weeks, there has been much bacon talk in my
world.

Two weekends ago, I decided that the secret to a good sausage
gravy is bacon grease, and a little bit of cooked bacon. Yep, heart
attack in progress. I’m still refining the recipe a bit, and will
share it when I’m happy with it.

Apparently in tune with bacon on the brain, the folks at
Seattle’s Cook Local posted
this picture on twitter: Chocolate chip cookies with candied
bacon. Think what you will, but this sounds pretty good to me.
They promised a recipe, but suggested using regular chocolate chip
cookie dough and mixing in candied bacon. They offered me these
instructions to candy bacon on Twitter: take two strips, and
in a ziploc bag with brown sugar, shake, then bake at 350-degrees
for 15 minutes. Cool and chop.

And adding to the bacon front, today I saw this upcoming event
mentioned in Seattle
Magazine: Baconopolis from 6-8 p.m. Feb. 25. Cost is $30 and
includes boutique bacon tastings and bacon-enhanced dishes and
desserts with Seattle celebrity chef Tom Douglas. To buy tickets
contact Christie at 206.448.2001 or email her at:
christinal@tomdouglas.com.

When I went to look up more information on the event, I also
found a bacon bun recipe from Tom Douglas. Read it
here.

I think all this means that Kitsap needs to have its own bacon
festival, a Kitsap Bacconalia, if you will.

If you’re feeling like doing a little trendy dining in Seattle,
now’s your chance to save at least a buck or two. The annual
New Urban
Eats deal lets you try dinner at one of 17 restaurants
opened since 2006. For $30, you get an appetizer, entree and
dessert, which isn’t bad for most Seattle dinners .

Two of the restaurants are within walking distance from the
downtown ferry terminal:

I got a chance to meet and watch Jane Gibson, executive pastry
chef at Salty’s on Alki seafood
and dessert restaurant.

She charmed students at Ridgetop Junior High School in
Silverdale with humor served up with a light drawl, a gift from her
upbringing on a Tennessee farm. She also gave some great advice to
aspiring chefs, such as